


“Sand, sea and sky”

by Creamteasforever



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Afterlife, M/M, Mystery, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 07:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2060127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creamteasforever/pseuds/Creamteasforever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no doubt that Sherlock and John were dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Sand, sea and sky”

**Author's Note:**

> More of a philosophical exercise about the afterlife than a story, in truth...but Sherlock and John are in it and they do work out a mystery. For those who are unsettled by the concept of infinity, please be forewarned. 
> 
> Enjoy. Thoughtfully.

John Watson woke up. 

This was a surprise, as he’d hadn’t been expecting to do so ever again. He was a doctor; he knew what kind of ugly death it was, and how quickly it came, when the aorta burst in an explosion of bullets - for a moment, he remembered, he’d seen himself falling weightless in the sudden stillness, mind quiet and ready for the end but still reaching out for Sherlock’s hand -

 

Sherlock!

John twisted around and up, all his nerves focused on the one goal. His partner was lying motionless only a metre away, the tousled black hair dusted with white sand. A moment’s work to turn him over and up, frantically feeling for a pulse at the wrist, the throat, the heart. There was none. 

Abruptly Sherlock sneezed and sat up. He gently prised away John’s searching hand, looked around with an expression of considerable curiosity. 

"Hello, John. Very sorry to have gotten you murdered like that, but as you can see, I didn’t manage to avoid the same fate myself."

"Who says we’re dead?" John demanded. "We’re sitting here. Having a conversation. No limbs lost."

Sherlock sighed, in the ostentatious fashion he favoured when making a point. “Aside from having my chest blown open and watching my transport suffocate in its own bodily fluids, then waking up to find it still in one piece, still wearing my favourite coat without so much as a tear…have you looked around yet?”

"Okay, it’s not an desolate slippery alley behind a warehouse," John agreed. "We’ve been moved."

More different surroundings would have been difficult to imagine. They were sitting on a small sandy beach that curved along the edge of an impossibly high cliff face: white, polished, and lonely. Ahead of them an ocean of colourless waves lapped beneath a blank sky. That was all - the abrupt right angle where solidity met fluid, and the two of them at its very vertex, gave the world an peculiar optical illusion, as though the gravity might switch the other way and allow them to walk across the opaque plain, a wall of water towering far overhead. 

John nestled against his lover, the imposing emptiness making his simple wanting into need for the feeling of a friendly, human touch. Did he imagine that Sherlock had the same mental shiver, equal parts desperation and desire, or was it merely a matter of responsiveness and reading his partner’s body language? Not purely put on, John guessed, as the detective reached out and took him close in that tight, urgent grasp that seemed to be Sherlock’s preferred method of embracing. His flesh was cool, but not cold. Breathing in that familiar warm scent was very comforting. 

"This isn’t quite what I thought heaven would be like."

"Nor I. However, there’s one comfort. We aren’t in hell, at the very least."

"Can you…can you really be sure about that? I don’t see any gates or trumpets or anything. Maybe it is. Maybe we’re stuck here."

"Don’t be silly. Whatever my personal hell is, it couldn’t possibly include you. Since you’ve expressed similarly romantic thoughts on occasion, I can only assume that you feel the same way." He wiggled an arm out from the hug and brushed lightly at his lover’s face, entwining his legs delicately with John’s.

"Oh, you," John said, finding a measure of relief in the fact that his voice could still manage a quiver of laughter. He batted playfully at a stray curl, then allowed his hand to slip further down. Sherlock giggled involuntarily, as he always did, before recovering himself. 

"We’ve been here not five minutes and you’re already defiling the afterlife? How very naughty of you, Doctor Watson."

"Well. You know what they say about near-death situations increasing one’s appreciation for life. I don’t see why that’d be any different just because we went ahead and actually died." He traced patterns over Sherlock’s skin, allowing his question to remain unspoken - there was no need to conceptualise the thought every time, when most of his more obscure thoughts were an open book to this man. 

"Here? Now?"

"Don’t see anyone around here to explain what’s going on, do you? Might as well pass the time somehow."

"There is that," Sherlock said cheerfully, as they fell into each other. 

 

Later on - much, much later, John would have liked to have said, they lay curled together, not quite succeeding in seeing each other properly in their position. Sherlock wasn’t cool to the touch any longer, but flushed, contented looking; John had checked both their pulses, found them to be normal, and was half-inclined to pass off his earlier thought as a misapprehension born of panic. 

"You’re hungry," John commented, resting his ear against his lover. "Remarkable what a racket your stomach’s making, for a dead man."

"Pavlovian response. This is usually about the point where you’d be thinking about what type of calories you’re going to insist I consume before we get into another sort of trouble. And violent exercise always makes me hungry."

John snorted at the double entendre - or was that triple? - and felt inside his coat for the Kit-Kat he’d stuffed into it before hurrying out of the flat. It was still there, solid-feeling if a little warmed and flattened now. He pulled it out and offered it wordlessly, smiling at the tempted expression on Sherlock’s face. 

But the detective shook his head and sat up, rubbing absently at his gurgling midsection. “Best save it, we might want it later. Our position appearing rather more similar to that of castaways than ethereal souls. In fact,” he said, switching effortlessly into an atogether different register than light-hearted romance, “our next order of business would seem to be that classic adventure story question. What sort of possessions we’ve retrieved from the wreckage of our lives, etceteras. Might as well lay them out and see what we have.” There was a trace of amusement in his voice. “Much easier to search clothes you’re not wearing, after all.”

Sherlock, as was his wont, hadn’t burdened himself; he had a darkened and dead mobile phone, a few notes and cards and a pink silk handkerchief (“what? It’d be very useful for binding a wound”), keys to the flat along with his carelessly elegant clothing. John was glad he’d been wearing a comfortable shirt under his favourite jumper, in addition to his coat; there were a couple of pens and a notebook in the pockets of his trousers, the tiny medical kit he carried, his own mobile phone and key. 

"And a couple of those Royal Mail rubber bands. The red ones, from before they changed the colour to brown again. I don’t even know why I was carrying those."

"Anything might be useful here," Sherlock said heartily. "I wonder. I wonder very much. May I have one?"

John unlooped one from the tangle, allowed his fingertips to linger on his lover’s a moment longer then necessary. “There you are. Though I can’t tell what you’re going to do with it.”

"Not wishing to inflict harm on either of us unless absolutely necessary…neither flux nor wither nor change its state," Sherlock murmured, parting the band along a stress fracture. He laid the strand down on the sand. "See if entropy is still operative. It seems fairly evident what the answer must be, judging by the state of my interior, but the accepted rules of natural processes may be completely different now for all we know. If things miraculously restore themselves to a prior state here that’s worth knowing."

They stared at the bit of rubber intently. It stayed torn. 

"So we don’t even know what we can rely on here, can we?" John said. "For all we know we might be able to fly or something." Awkwardly, he jumped in the air, going up a couple of inches, before coming back down again. "Or not."

"Right. But I think it’s fair to proceed on the assumption that whatever force it was restored us to pre-death conditions is no longer operating. There are consequences again. Rather exciting really. Maybe we can manage to die all over again." He struck a pose. "I wonder what happens if you get yourself killed in the afterlife?"

"Don’t forget, we also have some sand," John pointed out. He scraped a line through it with a forefinger, wondered at the multitudes of identical grains, like those of a child’s sandbox but moreso.

"And water….very curious water," Shelrock added, after palming a little and tasting the result. "It’s fresh."

John scooped up a drink - it was indeed fresh and not salty, the cleanest and purest that he could remember. He trailed his hand through the waves, watched the sheen of sweat wash away invisibly into the waves. “At least we won’t die of thirst. It’s not a pretty way to go. I saw a case in Afghanistan, just the one, and that was more than enough.”

Sherlock waved outwards, vaguely. “We have an entire ocean to drain. I don’t think that’s the problem here.”

"How deep do you think it extends? I wouldn’t mind taking a dip about now, if I saw a bottom." That was slightly unnerving, John thought - there was no differentiation, no gradual muddy lowering of land into water, just the abrupt drop-off where the solid part ended. He fingered the edge and drew back his hand quickly, hurt; the line felt sharp. 

"I am reasonably convinced that there is no bottom, at least not one we’ll be able to reach. That liquid is perfectly clear, and as you say we can’t see where it ends, which means that for our purposes it effectively doesn’t. If whoever manufactured this peculiar concept of the afterlife is as simple-minded as this rather uninteresting setup would seem to mandate, I imagine it extends down as far as that cliff does up."

"I don’t see any fish in there, either. Or seaweed, or the normal ocean things."

Sherlock was busy digging. “That doesn’t rule out microorganisms in sufficiently small quantities, though somehow I doubt it. Do you know, there isn’t much sand here, just the depth of a bucket or so. And it’s very cold beneath. Are we on a shelf, or an extrusion of the cliff?” 

"What’s the difference?"

"One of those would be solid all the way down, the other might just be jutting out with water underneath." He moved closer to the cliff face, feeling at the shoreline. "There’s a bit of an edge here, I think. I could check how far it goes. Swim underneath, see if I can come out the other side or not."

"I’m not keen on that, your swimming in a sea where you can’t touch ground. If you go down you might not come up again."

"Nevertheless, worth the attempt. And I need a bath now in any event." He smiled, pushed himself out and trod water for a few moments, taking deep breaths. John crawled over, reaching out to Sherlock without a thought, and was surprised to take his partner’s hand from precisely where he saw it through the water. There was something curious about the lack of refraction here, as though the diffuse light - like nothing so much as the sunlight during a grey overcast morning - didn’t differentiate between air and water. 

"We have to learn, John. The more information we have about our present surroundings, the better. It’s not life-threateningly cold in here, just a bit nippy."

"All right. Be careful. Don’t rush, just go down a bit and see what’s there first, yeah?"

"If you insist." Sherlock dived underneath; John was comforted that he came up almost instantly. 

"A couple of meters, perhaps? I could easily get under that, and it looked like a clear way through. Wait for me on the other side." Down he went again. 

John barely stopped long enough to absorb a long breath and let it out again before diving in after. Sherlock had warned him of the cool water, and could have done so in more strenuous terms, he thought; it bit at the skin with the force and chill of a waterfall, a bright pungent impact. He could see Sherlock, see him clearly through the water, only a short distance in front; the detective swam with neat precise strokes, waves rippling away and merging into the currents of the tide. Small as the distance was, it was long enough down here; by the time they bobbed to the surface again both were gasping for air. 

They stretched out on the beach, still breathing heavily, rubbing warmth back into each other. The air was still, without moisture; once they were dry enough to climb into their clothes everything was all right again. 

"A shelf, then," Sherlock said eventually. "The same substance as the cliff, I should say." He gouged a fingernail’s worth of substance from the white wall, studied it closely, touched the fragment with his tongue.

"Ice. Or at least, something with the consistency and behaviour of ice. Of course. We’re at the edge of a tremendous iceberg."

John peered up. “If that’s what it is, can you imagine how far down the main body must go? Nine tenths under the water and all that…” 

"Makes you wonder how far down this water does extend. We could carve into it." Sherlock scraped away speculatively. "It’d be difficult, but I think the ice is thinner at the edge. A few hours dedicated labour and I think we could accomplish the task."

"Why would we do this? With what? Our bare hands?"

"Keys, John. Your pens. We can gouge it out, then start paddling ourselves forward. The next task ahead of us is to push ourselves far enough out to see this cliff from a good distance off, see if there’s an easy way up it somewhere. I don’t want to spend ages carving footholds in the cliff only to go a little ways out and see that there was a better spot not far away."

"Sherlock, this is crazy. It’d never float. Even if it floated, it’d never carry us along with it."

"It’s all about forces and displacement of water, John. If you can calculate whether a given piece of ice, given estimated size and weight of passengers, will be capable of holding the weight, you can be positive all will go well."

"Oh? And you just happen to have the proper mathematical formulas to tell us whether this is safe locked away in your headspace?"

Sherlock looked smug. “As a matter of fact, I do. And you know what?”

"What."

"The voices in my head say yes, it’s safe. Isn’t that reassuring?"

John wondered what manifestation of mathematics Sherlock was mentally conversing with now. An old teacher, a university tutor? Or just hearing numbers, the way he “saw” words?

"If you say so…"

 

It took less time than John would have guessed, or maybe it was just the lack of distraction that made it seem that way. Two battered flat keys weren’t the most effective tools for gauging through the boundary of ice, but they did the job eventually. Sherlock moved back and let John do the honours for the last little edge in the corner, wincing despite his calm logic as their little ice floe shifted uneasily in the water. For a moment John was certain it was bound to tip, readied himself for an involuntary swim. 

Then it settled down, floating neatly in the water. 

"Well done us," Sherlock said proudly, stowing his key away in his coat pocket and shifting to the other side of the floe. "We can improvise some oars out of…erm…" He stopped, stood up cautiously, and kicked the wall - they moved away from it quickly at first, then more slowly. "Something. Swim and push it with our hands if need be."

John was unhooking the halves of his plastic medical kit, held one flat piece up for Sherlock’s inspection. “I know they’re small, but will these do?”

"Wonderful. John, you’re brilliant." He knelt down and began to paddle. "You counterbalance me over there, so we don’t start veering. See, we’re moving now. That’s the most important thing. Going somewhere we haven’t been."

 

For a long time, that was all that happened, and it seemed enough. John felt a curious peace settle over his mind, recognising the same sense of well-being and serenity that came with the afternoon of a subdued, blazing summer’s day, everything under the sun silent. There was plenty to talk about, more than enough to speculate upon, but with all tasks but their self-imposed one now complete, hurry and bustle seemed meaningless. There was time now, time for all those conversations they’d missed having in the flurry of cases and work that had constituted their lives, time for lazy drifting and lying alone together as long as they desired, time for everything. 

He wasn’t entirely sure that Sherlock felt the same way, though - he’d always been the more domestic one - and this was what prompted him to make the first remark an indefinite period later. “Do you think Lestrade will have sorted out the case all right?”

"Oh, he will have done. I called before the finale and told him my deductions. He’ll have figured it out from there, we were essentially finished with the case anyway." Sherlock coughed, filled his paddle with water and sipped before continuing, his voice clearer now. "Even Scotland Yard will be able to book them on the evidence they have now. We were done."

"Except for running the gauntlet of several dozen angry security guards unscathed."

"Yes, well, one can’t have everything. The main point is that we wrapped up the one urgent matter that was occupying our lives. Accomplished our unfinished business. Not everyone’s that lucky."

"But…actually, no. I was going to say that I might have called Harry, but come to think of it I wouldn’t. Maybe I wouldn’t have even if I had known what was going to happen, we’d been in worse situations than that and I never thought of contacting her. It wouldn’t have been me."

"What would you have said? ‘Dearest sister, who I see only at holidays twice a year if that, please know that I’m passing away today in the company of the deranged maniac I share a flat with? Don’t send flowers?’ "

"Sherlock, that’s cruel."

"A bit funny."

"A bit funny and cruel then."

"And wouldn’t you say that was me all over?"

They laughed quietly together. 

 

There was a pause. It might have lasted for ten minutes, or half an hour, or a day, for all John knew. Only the vague sensation of growing hunger troubled him. 

 

"There’s something about the way it all looks the same," Sherlock said. 

"You mean, how undifferentiated it is?"

"Not even that so much, as…well. Elements. You know what the ancient Greeks said about them, that there’s four different basic types of matter? And today there’s a contingent convinced that the metaphor’s still applicable, it’s just been transferred to states of being instead."

"Earth, water, air and fire? Not much earth around here."

"Solid." Sherlock tapped the floe. "Liquid." He paddled. "Gas." He gestured into the air. 

"There’s more states of being than that now, I’m sure. Like plasma and things. Matter doesn’t work the same way in stars, I know that much."

"Are there now? Well, that rather knocks a hole in the theory. My point was, though, I’m not convinced that everything we see here isn’t all a manifestation of the same basic stuff. As though we’re travelling through a primordial aether." 

"I still don’t see any fire, though."

"I wonder whether that’s us," Sherlock mused. "Entropy. Chaos. The random factor. You know these aren’t our proper bodies. This is a very good mockup of my transport, but it isn’t my real one, the one I looked after intermittently and wore to exhaustion sometimes."

"Yeah. Sorry, I did my best to stop that."

"Not your fault. You couldn’t police me all the time. Nobody could."

"Didn’t matter much in the end, did it?"

“I wouldn’t say that. Lasted as long as yours did.”

 

Time passed, passing, yet to pass. 

 

 

 

 

John bethought himself of the chocolate. They shared it hungrily, washed down by all they could hold in the way of sweet water. 

"You know, I’d have expected the iceberg to have gone over the horizon by now, but it’s not. It’s just there, as infinite as ever. Looks almost as close as it did."

"Your thinking is in terms of a spherical earth, where it would dip below the curvature eventually. This sea we’re on is evidently flat, at least with reference to the iceberg. No knowing."

"Then will we stop seeing it?"

Sherlock turned back, looked ahead at the horizon. “How far can you see the light of a star, John? We might not. By now, I’d think I’d rather keep going ahead and see where we’re going anyway; it’s so much more interesting than where we’ve been.”

"We’re looking at a single line where the water meets sky. That we’ll never be able to reach."

"Are you so sure? We’re making good progress now. Then too, you’d think such a tremendous sea would be smooth and flat, but it’s not, there is a definite tide. Assuming Newtonian laws of motion apply, and the fact that when we push back we go forward that’s not so unreasonable…there’s a force out there that must be making waves, and we have no idea what it is. Isn’t that exciting?"

"Mmm. I suppose. So you don’t, for instance, find this mind-numbingly boring?" 

"Not as such. Are you?"

"Just checking. I thought you might. Maybe I don’t find waves as interesting as you do."

"Well. I’m also sorting through my mind place," Sherlock confessed. "Quite a lot in there I’ve not thought about actively for ages. An astonishing quantity of old poetry and novels I put away in there during university. Kept meaning to clear it out, but I’m rather glad I didn’t now."

"Maybe you can teach me some? It’d be something to do." Bored Sherlock was a dangerously anti-social Sherlock, and given their limited capacities for thrilling chases, interactions with odd clients or even just going out and getting smashed at present, John wanted very much to keep him happy.

Somehow he hadn’t seen himself doing this again after death. Wasn’t it supposed to be easier now? But no, his lover was as unknowable, as basically mysterious as ever he had been in life…

"If you like," Sherlock said, with a slight smirk to his grin. "Let’s start with an easy one. ‘It is an ancient Mariner, and he stoppeth one of three’…"

It took time. It took a long time; John’s memory had been good but never pitch-perfect, and Sherlock insisted on teaching a single verse at a time, patiently drilling him line after line, making him recite them back word perfect.

"I think, after this, you’d best teach me your mind palace technique," John said. "I wouldn’t want to lose anything."

"Of course. Mine changes according to circumstance, but at first you’ll want a focus. Somewhere you know intimately. For you, I’d recommend Baker Street."

"Why?"

"For one, it’s my usual one, so we’ll be able to compare notes and know roughly what we’re discussing in parallel. Also I suspect you’d find it easier to attach thoughts to than anything else - I did try associating to the Underground once, but that proved too confusing when I was cross-referencing actual stations. But as the real Baker Street isn’t here for us to be…muddled about…" He looked abruptly bereft. John patted him comfortingly. 

"Well, don’t worry about it now. What was the next line?"

More time, more lines. He fixed them in his own all-too-human memory, eventually. 

 

They were reaching the end, John knew; the poem had come back to the wedding, the tale of the wanderer was drawing to a close. Sherlock sucked in a breath - they were both weak now with stillness and hunger, no longer able to paddle but the drift of water still carried them on - and began the next verse. 

"O wedding guest," he said, and coughed again. "This soul hath been alone on a wide wide sea. So lonely ‘twas, that God himself scarce seemed there to be…" Exhausted with the effort, he half-fainted across the white sand, laying his head in his lover’s lap; John was scarcely able to stay upright himself but managed somehow, determined to support his Sherlock. 

"John…John, I’m frightened. This is all so unreal, so unlike anything I might possibly have heard or guessed. What if it’s true, that this isn’t you at all? What if all that’s happening here is that my mind’s so disturbed with the prospect of spending eternity by myself that I’ve convinced myself you’re here? No wedding guest, no one to meet you in the afterlife, just an infinite stretch of wide sea…"

"There’s not much I can say that’d you’d take as evidence that wasn’t. Nothing I can think of. Anything I could say, like that secret code phrase you said we should use, you’d know you’d know already."

"Do you remember what is it?" Sherlock demanded, propping himself up and around to gaze at John’s eyes. "Still worth checking."

"Oranges and lemons, you said. I still think it’d be a little hard to fit into a conversation." 

"Say the bells of St. Clement’s. I miss church bells," he added inconsequently. "That means nothing. I miss everything about our London, I’m very homesick. Maybe that’s the best proof it’s you here after all. If I was imagining a place to please myself, it’d be quite a lot more complicated than…well, than here."

"Even with me?" John teased, voice cracking.

"Even with you. I’ve never been agoraphobic, but…all that space. All of it out there and eternity, so much bigger than anything I’ve ever dealt with. Unsolvable."

"That’s why you have to believe it’s me," John told him. "If I am a simulation, and we really are going to spend eternity together, wouldn’t you rather think it was really me with you?"

"No. No, I don’t," Sherlock said, looking ashen and drawn. "Truth, John. I have to know the truth, whatever is."

"Then we’re back to square one. Except that from my point of view, remember, you could be the Sherlock hallucination who needs to be proven to me. After all, I know I’m here. We neither of us really know what the other is. We take it on trust." 

"Tautological. We know we’re awake when we’re not dreaming even if we don’t know it when we’re dreaming? That’s love, I suppose." 

"Should I be asking you just now whether you’ll love me forever and ever?" John inquired. He felt the body he held shudder, in involuntary repugnance, and couldn’t find it in his heart to mind. 

"Forever, John, is a terrifying concept that no amount of romantic piffle could possibly make tolerable. We’d fall in love and out of it again and hate each other and come back to love again and do it all again a million times and run out of emotional registers, and run the gamut of passion to complete emotional indifference, and still have never found nearly enough ways to pass the time. It is the personification of boredom. I am terrified by it. But," and he looked up, curling his lanky body closer, "If we’re going to have to suffer through it, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather share it with."

John rocked him back and forth, gently, and said nothing. Somehow he didn’t think they were going to have to wait that long. 

 

 

And another long time later, too weak even to cup the nearby water into his drying mouth, John gazed blearily at the sky before closing his eyes again, wondering for the hundredth time where the pale soft light was coming from. Sherlock was again unconscious next to him, whether asleep or faint with inanition it was hard to tell and pointless to ask. He allowed his tongue to scour his lips again, searching for any molecule of chocolate that might have been missed before. “Good god, but we could use some help out here,” he muttered. 

"A miracle, perhaps? All is provided for those with faith."

John cracked an eye open. An Angel, a real live proper angel, fluttered in the air over head, harps and halo and glowing white wings. 

"Bloody hell, it’s about time you got here," he said irritably, before clapping a hand over his mouth. "Um. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that."

The Angel smiled and laughed, in a playful, light register that was like the tinkling of a thousand tiny bells. John shook his head, briefly puzzled by the odd things the sound was doing to his skull, before realising that the throbbing was fading away. He felt freshened, invigorated by its presence, better than he’d felt since…since dying, perhaps? Something like that. 

"If only you’d called on the Lord sooner! We must wait until we have been called upon to appear. Some souls never do, the poor lost sheep."

"Who," Sherlock asked abruptly, still recumbent but with a glint in his eye and a steely cast to his voice, "are you, and why did you show up? I most certainly was not praying."

The Angel smiled briskly. “The Lord has all-encompassing mercy. For the sake of the great love your partner shares with you, I have come to aid you both.”

"I was not expecting it to be this literal," John said. "I was in fact not really expecting anything at all, but okay. I asked for help and got you, apparently. Who are you?"

"One of many angels. Here to aid you to heaven, ask what lives you wish to pass together. Whatever eternities you can desire shall be made true instantly."

"I was right. They do pass off simulations as heaven! Were you not listening to me with your divine surveillance earlier, when I specifically indicated I wanted no such thing?"

The Angel didn’t appear to be put out, as such, but its feathers ruffled. “You are to be rewarded for your virtues with an infinity of virtue. A world of angels who can offer you every good happiness. We are not petty, nor limiting; all who wish to enter are invited in.”

"As a sort of apology for life, I suppose. So you’re an angel, a presumably mighty nearly-divine force, and you’ve chosen to manifest as a cuddly bit of chicken feather-covered fluff because why?"

"Because I personify the image that John sought after at heart. The illustrated angel of his first picture book. You," the Angel informed Sherlock, "would refuse to accept any sort of manifestation in the spirit of humility. He has a lingering sense of religion, if nothing else."

"We are most definitely dead, then." John said gloomily. "No chance of this being a crazed hypnosis or anything. I lost that picture book when I was five and haven’t thought about it since, but yeah, that’s exactly what it looks like."

"I wonder if you did, really, or if this so-called angel is capable of inserting memories into your mind," Sherlock mused. "You know, I hadn’t thought of the possibility that we were kidnapped by aliens. It’s a sad day when I find myself seriously hoping for the possibility of aliens."

"Or we might be in a computer simulation after the end of the universe. Sherlock, I dunno how much use it is going off on other scenarios we have no facts whatsoever for. You’re the one who always told me to stick to the evidence we have, and it does seem like the evidence says we’re dead."

"Sad thing is you’re absolutely right, dear. To return to the point; why can’t we be in a proper London, then?" Sherlock demanded. "All the other people who want to be in one too, there must be a lot."

"Few wish to be so philosophically demanding; they seek only comfort and security. More than two people brings chaos and discord." The Angel shook its wings out. "I myself feel that it would be more perfect, more ideally suited to the desires of each individual, if we separated everyone, but in deference to your animal origins two are permitted together. Many change their minds after a few centuries." 

"Fine," Sherlock said grimly. "That sorts out the what and why. Where are we, then?"

"Nowhere. Heaven is to be found that way." The Angel pointed. "Upon the top of the infinitely high cliff there, the one you gouged away so heartlessly. This is nowhere, a chaotic sea you’re adrift upon, with no purpose and no meaning. It is all the places where heaven isn’t."

"Is it really a sea?" John asked, curiously. 

"Irrelevant, in truth. The sea is nothing. Immortal bliss and an end to all striving lies with me."

John looked over at his lover, who still looked weak, pale as the sand he lay on. He shifted reluctantly. 

The Angel definitely sighed at this point. “Why is it so difficult to make the decisions that are in goodness for you? Heaven is a place of infinite joys, the presence of the Almighty, and out here there is nothing. Even the Angels cannot traverse it without a being calling upon our presence.”

"And despite that, we can, somehow."

"You have your souls to lose, and consequently there must be a choice for you to lose them. This is where you may do so. No harm can come to you in the safety of heaven, but here your immortal bodies may drown, may fight, suffer and die. There is real danger here, for if you perish outside the gates your souls shall cease forever." Its voice was pleading now. "Think of all you stand to lose. And there is no end to this ocean. You can never reach such a place. It is literally impossible for there to be an end to it."

"But eliminate the impossible…and what you have is the truth. I want truth. I am not going."

"And I," John said, "stay with him. So there. I always thought we’d end up in hell together, anyway."

"Any chance you might return us to Earth?" Sherlock asked, curiously. "I always fancied the idea of reincarnation, myself."

"No."

"Pity."

"But you can ask to come back to us, whenever you would like. Heaven will be waiting for you for an eternity."

Sherlock trembled violently, and John saw the horror in his eyes, having the joys of a perfect, perfect world at your fingertips forever and refusing to go for the sake of one’s principles. 

“We’re sure. Please. Leave now,” John said, quickly. Better a short, quick death with his lover than their immersal in a world of lies. 

“No, no, not yet,” Sherlock said urgently. “If it’s a choice being offered to us, there has to be an actual choice involved. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been any bother with this drawn-out process, right? There’s no point pretending we can make up our minds to be here if we’re only going to slowly starve to death out here.”

“This is so,” the Angel agreed. 

“So there must be something that you can do. Some different miracle than the infinite life offer. Something more practical for our current needs, perhaps?”

"The mistake of Esau," the Angel said. "To ask for a mess of pottage instead of the heir’s birthright. But if you choose to damn yourselves eternally, I must aid you." It sighed. "It is not meant to go like this. No one should be this indifferent to the thought of the Eternal Presence. You should have awakened on the beach, prayed for the Lord, and been translated before going through such suffering as you have experienced."

John felt Sherlock’s tortured flesh calm, suddenly reassured. “So you’ll accept my bargain,” the detective said carefully. “You’re Michael and Mephistopheles all in one. You can refuse us the right to enter your gates or whatever it is forever, but first you have to make it possible for us to live out here if we desire.”

The Angel’s face twisted, as though in pain, but the answer came: “Yes.”

Sherlock’s face split into a grin. “That is, by far, the best news I have heard all day. Whatever a day is around here.”

A simple wave of the Angel’s hand, and a sunbeam lit the colourless world. One single tree sprung up, green and heavy with fruit; John plucked the first solid food he’d had in a long, long time and was comforted by the taste, the same as the apple he’d eaten his first day at school. Another grew in its place, this one like the one he’d brought for breakfast the day he’d met Sherlock. It was as if the tree was grown out of his memories, he realised; their lives made solid and real. 

"All that you have lost," the Angel whispered, and flew away on silent wings. They watched as it vanished towards the cliff. 

"Of course, it was lying to us all along. Or at least stretching the truth, as much as it could," the detective said with satisfaction. John handed over a fruit tasting of his tenth birthday apple tart, which Sherlock promptly devoured with no little enthusiasm. "There was one thing it was very deliberately not mentioning," he explained, with a kind of fierce joy. "I can’t believe, John, that we’re the only humans in history to prize knowledge and truth over illusionary dreams. There must be other people on this sea, offered the same bargain and the same temptations. We’ll find them out here, all right. Talk with them, fight with them, anything, but at least we’ll be living. Heaven is other people."

He stared over the edge of their isle into the clear, endlessly deep ocean.

"Damn! There’s just one thing that bothers me. I wish I’d thought to ask it whether Lestrade got his conviction or not."

"Cheer up," John said. "In a few decades, or maybe a lot sooner if he gets killed in the line of duty. We’ll run across him eventually if it’s as eternal out here as all that. Or else we won’t be in a position to mind."

"If he doesn’t stay in illusions heaven. I wonder how much of Scotland Yard has ended up there."

John chuckled. After a moment Sherlock joined in. 

And the sound of laughter stretched across that sea a long, long distance, maybe even all the way up to heaven, as the lovers paddled towards the tide.

**Author's Note:**

> This one was cheating; Sherlock and John have nothing to do with the plot at all, really. It’s mostly my attempting to use our safe, adorable mystery-solving couple to come to terms with an idea that I have found just about infinitely terrifying for a long time – the prospect of eternal life. The only version of living forever I’ve ever found sounding remotely tolerable was the one in “The Last Battle”, with the idea of an England within an England within an England, and even that sounds strangely suffocating when one tries considers the literally inconceivable. How does anything not grow stale when it has forever to take place in?
> 
> Well, you can make a start on answering that with a borrowed image from another story. The title’s taken from “The Three Doctors”, or rather from the Terrance Dicks novelisation, where a brave attempt is made to explain why the ultimate in created reality looks like a bit of Cromer. It’s a recurring image in literature, the idea of boundaries being a place where the rules change, endings and beginnings happen. The idea of an endless ocean has a kind of plausibility about it. I might refer you to the Terry Pratchett motif of a cosmic turtle forever swimming, or the far older Hindu mythology that are behind those images, or indeed the Hebrew “Tehom”...but basically, an infinite ocean after death just feels sort of right to me. More right than anything else. 
> 
> So you can see how combining this with the ending of “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” (daft name for a ship if you think about it) and even more the cliff scene in “The Silver Chair” (the general sexism of which has always rather troubled me, but that’s by the by), served as a starting-off point. George Orwell’s quote about how the majority of people don’t want to be saints, but human, is probably what inspired the oranges and lemons cross-reference. I fixed up a lot of the angel’s dialogue for this version to get the effect I wanted; the ending was a good bit clumsier in the original. The story isn’t all I might want it to be, but then, it was never going to be perfect. It doesn’t need to, it’s served its purpose. 
> 
> Because whether anyone else finds something in this story or no, there’s a part of me that is soothed by the thought of our familiar duo voyaging across this curious sea...


End file.
